


choose and choose and choose

by cartographies



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, F/F, Mild Fillorian Worldbuilding, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Thematically Important Off-screen Bestiality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:13:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographies/pseuds/cartographies
Summary: Fen, becoming.
Relationships: Fen & Eliot Waugh, Fen/Margo Hanson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	choose and choose and choose

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, the beginning my many-thousands-of-words-and-counting effort to make Fen into a coherent character! I imagine the readership for this will be pretty small, but there are many dear and personal things in this, and I'm excited to start sharing it. 
> 
> Title, which I'm not particularly satisfied with, from Marilyn Hacker's "On Marriage":
>
>> No law books frame terms of this covenant.  
> It’s choice that’s asymptotic to a goal,  
> which means that we must choose, and choose, and choose  
> momently, daily. This moment my whole  
> trajectory’s toward you, and it’s not losing  
> momentum. Call it anything we want.

Bayler appeared in Fen’s village a few months before she turned eighteen. Hanging around the pub, making friends, tagging along with the mayor’s sons as they came day after day to while away the hours standing around Fen’s father’s workshop, whistling at her, spitting tobacco in the dirt, giving great hoots of laughter in response to some joke Fen always felt glad not to have heard. They and Fen were some of the only people in the same age range in their village and thus Fen was marked out for the gift of their obsessive attention. They’d catch her going down to the river or hanging up clothes on the line and grab at her hair, demand a kiss, tell her she could practice for _the king_ on them. 

It was a favorite subject for jest in the village, Fen’s grandfather’s bargain he’d boasted loudly about at every given opportunity but that he’d died before seeing come to pass and so passed on to his luckless son and granddaughter. Now it looked like no Children of Earth would ever come again, and so these pretensions of a knife maker—a talented one, yes, but given Fillory’s current state it was a wasted talent, as Fen’s expertly trained father was reduced from the warrior’s blades his forefathers had forged to fashioning hunting daggers for farmers turned to poaching—were rich in absurdity, and Fen a particularly absurd child for such ambitions to depend upon. Of course, no one exactly missed Children of Earth, but the Pickwicks and their ilk were almost worse because they were as Fillorian as those they sniffed at and they proved to be no better at improving things because they were too focused on snapping up the privileges and authority of the absent throne and hoarding them jealousy to keep the rest of the country from falling into ruin. 

This and much else became clear to Fen through Bayler. The idea that Fillory was deeply in trouble was of course no surprise, but someone being in possession of such firm answers to its ailments was. It was beguiling. Although really Fen was at first drawn to him for no deeper reason than sheer novelty: he was someone new, and she didn’t meet new people often. 

He seemed drawn to her too. Because Fen was a fool she didn’t at first connect it to the fact Harvey, Marvey, and Darvey had certainly informed Bayler all about Fen’s prospective fate. Then again, Bayler himself gave no hint of it for a long time. He began coming alone to Fen’s father’s workshop, helping her haul things and asking Fen questions about herself. The headiest novelty of all, the opportunity to _tell_ someone about herself. 

Bayler would buy her a drink when she came by the pub to visit the brewer’s daughter Mabel and soon, eyes blazing, knuckles rapping against the table in his passion, he began to expound with eloquence on Fillory’s many problems. The crops failed year after year, and Fillory’s human populations suffered. Bears could hunt and alpacas could graze but humans were forced to fight over whatever scraps were left. Graves proliferated by the roadsides and a few powerful families centered around the court, in sinister cabal with their animal allies, grew richer and richer while everyone else got poorer. The birth rate among humans had progressively declined in the last decades as the food supply dwindled and Fillory’s sustaining magic waned, while the animals continued to breed like—well, like animals. Humans were outnumbered and marginalized, pushed to the edges, forced to rely on the generosity of their animal neighbors.

The topic that filled Bayler with the most venom was human women who chose to sleep with talking animals. Instead of respectably contributing to the production of human babies, they engaged in depraved lusts that could produce no offspring. 

This was something usually only hinted at, or spoken of in hushed whispers. It was taboo, it was _blasphemy_ —what else to call congress that was not beholden to the rules of fidelity set by the gods? 

But it happened. Everyone knew it. 

Fen had sat enraptured the whole time, mesmerized by Bayler’s fervor. But this latest tirade made her dare to venture her first timid disagreement.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it?” Bayler’s look of surprise nearly shamed her back to silence. “I mean—I’m sure I’m missing something. Can you help me understand?” 

It wasn’t that Fen was such a freethinking, non-judgemental person. She too felt disgust when everyone stopped to watch Judith the miller’s wife go into the woods, knowing exactly what she was up too with Pumblerig the bear. She just can’t quite follow Bayler’s logic from this to babies. They’d been talking about the barren fields that meant that strictly speaking Judith’s husband Orren could no longer be called a miller, because there was no longer very much to mill, but instead had come to be known as the town’s premier drunk via the notoriety of being it’s cuckold. Those facts seemed relevant, to Judith’s descent into the woods, to her return with a basket of resented fish and berries. Fen just can’t see what Judith respectably marrying a human man had solved.

Or what it had solved for Fen’s mother, dead this last decade. The smell of blood hanging heavy in the air of her parent’s bedroom, the sobs she’d tried to hide from Fen. A superlative Fillorian woman, and what had it availed her? Where were the fecundity and prosperity Bayler foretold as her reward? 

(That is the first knowledge of sex Fen can remember receiving: an overheard conversation between her mother and her aunt, a tipsy chat with its standard trade in carrot wine and gossipy good-humored vulgarity. Typical winter evening, warmth from the stove. Fen had been around eight and sitting in her favorite place beneath the table, hidden by the table cloth, toying with her most prized possession: a knife stolen from her father’s shop, usually hidden beneath her pillow but sometimes when she is feeling bold in the pocket of her dress, brought out to gaze upon when desire overwhelms caution. Fen sat, quiet and still, rubbing the flat of the blade with her thumb. Mapping the notches that make up the interlocking horns of two rams carved into the ancient wood of the hilt with the tips of her fingers. 

_It's nothing to write home about_ , her aunt had said. _Never has been, but it used to be worth it for a baby at the end._

 _Yes,_ Fen’s mother had agreed, _that’s how it goes_. Then a pained silence had descended, as Fen’s aunt Gert realized how she’d stepped in it. 

Hope Fen’s mother had in abundance. It was the babies that proved scarce. There had only ever been Fen.) 

(And if they’d come, those longed for children—how to feed them?)

“It has _to do_ ,” Bayler responded icily, “with how good Fillorian women have always been ill-used and disrespected, whether it be by the aristocracy or the beasts or the Children of Earth. It must stop. They must be able to live unmolested.”

Well. Well. Fen couldn’t disagree with that. She knew what her likely future was and she knew history, or at least what songs and stories made of history, and what such lore had made of the various grim and ludicrous fates that had fallen to the Fillorian consorts of its monarchs was...striking. It was not Fen’s destiny to live unmolested.

Fen swallowed and looked away, but not before she caught Bayler looking at her with a more pointed kind of intensity. 

After that evening Bayler doesn’t wait very long before explicitly revealing the implied meaning of that searing look. They’re walking together by the river one afternoon when Bayler turns to her and says, “How can you of all people doubt the ways Fillorian women in particular must be avenged?” 

Fen had been expecting this for some time now. “You’re referring to my grandfather’s bargain. That when the Children of Earth return, I’m to marry the High King.” 

She said this very calmly, very matter-of-factly, and Bayler looked surprised, like maybe he’d expected her to blush and demur, to cast her eyes downward in shame and stutter over the shameful words. But why? It was just fact. It was Fen’s life. 

“A bargain…” Bayler murmured to himself. “What a word. Fillorians are not things to be bargained away. The Children of Earth come here, and they think it’s all theirs for the taking, including women.”

“It was my grandfather who made the bargain. My grandfather who traded me away. Of his own initiative. The Children of Earth weren’t interested in brides. They wanted a blade.” 

Fen’s grandfather, who had doted on her, who had loved nothing more than to stroke her hair with his calloused fingers. His only grandchild, his meal ticket. Fen had been wrestling with that fact her whole life. She wanted to see what Bayler made of it.

“Of course,” Bayler said, “and this is why the situation is unacceptable. Good men are reduced to such base dealings. It is shameful.”

Was her grandfather an especially good man? Was the bargain that had given Fen away before she was born base? Her grandfather would put Fen on his lap and proclaim _what a fine lady this pretty lass will make! Won’t she, Dint_? _Dressed in silks and wreathed in scent. Lolling about on pillows, with nothing to do all day but eat candies._ Fen would giggle and then he’d tickle her sides till she shrieked and her mother would say without heat _stop that, you’ll make the child sick_. He’d wanted a life for Fen that was better than any his mere labor could provide. Fen did believe that. 

“They wanted to kill the Beast. But my grandfather would not give them the blade they needed for free. He needed to get something out of it.”

Fen wasn’t sure precisely what she was trying to argue. Or if she was trying to argue anything at all. Maybe she half-hoped to whip up Bayler’s ire, see that invigorating fury of his used on Fen’s behalf. That bitterness she’d never been able to access herself. Bayler loved to rail against men such as her grandfather, men who made accommodations rather than seeking to change things, who sought benefit for themselves alone rather than for Fillory as a whole. 

“It is shameful,” he repeated. “That we must rely on more foul magicians from Earth to save us from that perversion.” 

Fen had forgotten. Orren had never been the target of Bayler’s rage. Revulsion, yes. Condescension, yes. Such men are loathsome, except when it comes to their women, and then they are to be pitied as well as despised. 

She expected Bayler to go on, to finally fall into the rhythm of one of his speeches. To insist, as he has many times before, that Fillorians do not have to peaceably accept their lot, that they can not just wait for things to get better but must seek change themselves. Fen’s grandfather should have forged the blade for himself, sought out the Beast wherever he hid, and killed him.

Fen herself didn’t believe this. Her grandfather was not a magician and would have been killed instantly. So would any other Fillorian who dared to try, with no magic to match the Beast’s. For some reason she wanted Bayler to say it anyway.

He did not. Made nervous by the silence that has fallen Fen ventured weakly, “Well, it might not even be true. What my grandfather said. That the Children of Earth were from a future time and are eventually coming to deliver us. That’s what most in the village think, anyway, that my grandfather was cracked.”

Bayler stopped, and with a hand on Fen’s arm stopped her as well. His eyes met hers, and seemed to be searching for something. Perhaps he found it, because he said quietly, intently: “I do not think it’s a fantasy. I believe they will return, and that we must be ready. You most of all, Fen.”

“Yes,” Fen said. That’s true.

“You are not fruit for the taking,” Bayler said with that fervor that both enticed and repelled her. “You need not simply submit, when they come to collect their weapon.”

Fen’s breath stopped as she imagined what Bayler was about to say. The very concept of her marriage disgusted him. It flew in the face of all his most dearly held convictions. Would he urge her to resist? Tell her she mustn’t just go along? She could flee, or fight. She could resist. Her stomach roiled. 

“You have been given a very special role, Fen.” Bayler’s voice went deeper, and he took a step closer to her. “In forging the Fillory that is to come. You will be perfectly placed, once you are married, to shape things.”

The river slipped by. Fen turned and resumed walking, said briskly, “Yes, I’ve been thinking about that. Ever since you came. About how I could use my position, to try to make things better. It might be possible to influence him, to advise him. Or at least to educate him about the problems we face.”

Bayler gave her a satirical smile. “Yes, I’m sure Lady Claribel thought much the same.” 

Fen had reflected his smile on instinct, and now felt it freeze on her face. The second Bayler said the name the galloping strains of _Lady Claribel’s Head_ began pinging wildly around her skull with Fen powerless to shut it out. She hated that song, and it had haunted her on many sleepless nights ever since she first understood the words. It played at the pub and the patrons either laughed, nervously or cruelly, or else studiously avoided looking at her, depending on who they were and how many pints into the evening they’d gotten when the band started up. 

“I was thinking more along the lines of Sana the Silent,” Fen said with brisk optimism. Swallowing hard. 

“Meager, sanctimonious charity, dispensed at the whim of a king’s plaything?” Bayler sneered.

“What in Ember’s name do you suggest then?” Fen almost spit it out, flying hot in her frustration. What other models did Fen have? What did he expect from her? What could one expect from her? The idea that anyone could expect anything more from Fen than meekly going where she was led makes her burn with a sick, terrified excitement. "What would you have me do?" 

Bayler looked at her with a self-satisfied little smile on his face. His eyes seemed to weigh her up. Fen is abruptly aware of a feeling of being tested. Or, perhaps, led.

“Do you truly wish to know, Fen?” 

Fen gazed out at the brown stubble of the fields, hard against the low grey sky, to the little huddled cluster of the village houses, and the dark woods beyond pressing in close, reclaiming more fallow land by the year. The rill of water the only free thing anywhere Fen could reach. 

“Yes.”


End file.
